Car manufacturers are regularly looking for ways to reduce their environmental impact as well as production costs. In the house of Fordcreate a COMPOlive project durable spare partsby reusing food industry waste.

“At Ford, we’re always looking for ways to become greener, and sometimes inspiration can come from unexpected sources. By using waste from olive trees, we have been able to replace a significant amount of petroleum-based raw materials in the interior.”– clarifies Inga Wemeyer, Ford project manager.

Ford: spare parts from natural composite material

Working with olive trees allows us to harvest delicious fruits that are used for tasting, oil production or products such as tapenades. But this industry also generates a lot of waste such as twigs, branches and leaves, especially discarded during harvest.

That’s how Ford envisioned an innovative approach, which is to use these olive waste reach separated parts more durable for your vehicles. It is in the olive groves of Andalusia, in Spain, that the American producer is recovering waste generated during the production of olive oil : twigs, branches and other leaves.

Then they turn into biocompositescombining 40% olive fiber and 60% recycled polypropylene plastic : this is how Ford engineers can make strong and durable automotive parts. “To get the right combination, we had to test different ratios of waste and polypropylene. This was a challenging task, but ultimately allowed us to produce a material without compromising strength, durability and flexibility.explains Thomas Baranowski, injection mold expert at Ford.

Many benefits

The COMPOlive project ran from 2020 to 2023 and had to adapt to travel restrictions imposed by the health crisis. Despite this, Ford managed to develop innovative sustainable biocomposites for their spare parts intended for large-scale use: they should be equipped with electric vehicles of the next generation.

The benefits are numerous for Ford and its environmental impact: this olive fiber-based composite makes it possible reduce the amount of plastic used in the production of automobile parts, while not requiring additional costs of land and water for their cultivation. The recovery of these waste olive trees also makes it possibleavoid their destruction by burningwhich contributes to cleaner air.

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